June 2017

06/30/2017

Microsoft is ending support for version 7 of Bing Maps on June 30th, 2017. This Hotfix will upgrade your version of Bing Maps to version 8 so that you can continue to use the Geolocation Online Map Data feature.

This Hotfix applies to all 32-bit and 64-bit publicly released versions of the following products (including Service Packs and Updates):

06/29/2017

Please use our portal for finding answers to your questions with our Blogs, Technical Resources videos, and white papers. If you have a paid ProductivityNOW plan you can search our case solution knowledgebase or eLearning courses.

06/26/2017

When signing into your Autodesk software or the Autodesk Desktop App it hangs and crashes the application. This is due to trusted sites and/or your firewall blocking the Autodesk server.

To resolve the issue do the following:

Turn off your Antivirus

Turn off your Firewall

Open Windows Firewall by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type firewall, and then click Windows Firewall. Click Turn Windows Firewall on or off. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Click Turn off Windows Firewall (not recommended) under each network location that you want to stop trying to protect, and then click OK.

Set your user account control setting to never notify.

Open User Account Control Settings by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type uac, and then click Change User Account Control settings. To turn off UAC, move the slider to the Never notify position, and then click OK

Autodesk will be making a few changes to the user interface on theBIM 360 websiteduring the week of June 26 2017. Account admin's will see a different look when signing in and going to the admin page. If you are your the account admin for your company you should get an email that looks like this. (I apologize the image is small and blurry that Autodesk sent. I will update it once I see the change in my account.)

This release will include additional enhancements including:

the Project Members page will show which modules each user has access to and their access level.

the Project Members page also includes filters which let you filter members by module.

Account Administrators who manage more than one BIM 360 account will be able to switch between accounts from the header.

This release also includes subtle changes such as a full-page interface, and performance improvements.

This is an issue with the Adobe print driver not Revit or Autodesk software. You can go direct to Adobe for help on this but that might take a long time and they may not have an answer or just say go to Autodesk which starts a long cycle of finger pointing.

I have seen this over the years, I do know that Autodesk and Above are trying to work together to find a solution to keep the Adobe driver more stable in the Autodesk software. But for now it is best to have a PDF backup for your Revit software. AutoCAD has the out of box DWG to PDF driver that you should use.

NOTE: When you first click on install it may ask you to install an few add-ons like Bing search engine and other things that are irrelevant to a PDF driver, just click No or Cancel to continue with the install. However I have reinstall this driver myself to verify and did not get the option to install any add-ons so its possible enough people complained and they removed the adds.

Click on "Free Download" for the CutePDF Writer.

Select on "I accept the agreement" then click Next.

Click the Install button.

Click Yes to the popup that CutePDF Writer must be used and installed.

A CutePDF Writer Setup will popup

When this completes the driver should now be installed and you will see it in your printer drop down list.

If your machines windows updates recently ran and now none of your Autodesk software will open or works properly you need to do the following to resolve the issue until Autodesk and Microsoft figure out what is causing this and sends out a fix.

This has been the most successful; roll back your machine to a date/time before the Window updates were ran. You can search for the how to on the Microsoft website or there are several tech websites offering steps on how to do this.

The best way to download the Autodesk software is to use the "Download Now" which gives you all the files you need. It is best downloaded in IE (Internet Explorer) or Google Chrome. I have three methods below to try and download your Autodesk software.

First you haveto adjust some of your machines securities in order to be successful.

Here is what you will do:

Go to your temp folder and delete everything you can C:\Users\your user profile folder\AppData\Local\Temp OR here is a soundless video on how to get to your temp folder and delete everything:

In the path highlight the text and type %temp% and hit your enter key.

Click inside the list of files/folders and hold the ctrl key + A to select all.

Click your delete key.

If you are prompted with a message that a file is in use click the Skip button. If there are more than one file you can click the check box to “do this for all current items”.

Turn off your Antivirus

Turn off your Firewall

Open Windows Firewall by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type firewall, and then click Windows Firewall. Click Turn Windows Firewall on or off. If you're prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Click Turn off Windows Firewall (not recommended) under each network location that you want to stop trying to protect, and then click OK.

Set your user account control setting to never notify.

Open User Account Control Settings by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Control Panel. In the search box, type UAC, and then click Change User Account Control settings. To turn off UAC, move the slider to the Never notify position, and then click OK.

Verify the Autodesk ports and websites used are not being blocked by review my blog regardingAutodesk Trusted Sites.

Verify you as the user of the machine has the correct permissions. Being a part of the admin group doesn't always get you past permissions issue with installs. Follow my blog regardingAutodesk permissions requirements.

06/23/2017

Every once in a while I get asked about how to limit access to Projects on Revit Server. Unfortunately there is no way to limit access to projects natively in Revit Server. Autodesk has an article on this topic which you can access here.

If you are wanting Revit Server security along with a whole host of task automation options for Revit such as PDFs, DWG export, Navis exports, Data Sheets and Backup projects to name a few I would recommend you take a look at IMAGINiT Clarity

Note

There is a way to limit access to the Revit Server administrator if you would like to do that, the instruction can be seen at this Autodesk article.

06/21/2017

Because updates need to be applied equally to the Vault Server and all Vault clients, it is necessary to be able to determine if a client has been upgraded to the same build number as the server as shown under Help/About.

See the updated table below that lists the build numbers for all Vault versions from 2008 through 2017 with and without all available updates.